While
I love Japan, the Japanese people and Japanese arts, technology and
culture, I abhor Japan's (and Iceland's) whaling policy…

Iceland's
'scientific whaling' programme, like Japan's, is merely commercial whaling
in disguise.
Commercial whaling was banned by the International Whaling Commission
(IWC) in 1982, but a loophole allows the killing of whales for research
purposes. Iceland plans to sell the products of its 'research' to Japan,
where whale meat generates four billion yen in sales annually.

Click
on the Defend the Whales image above for further details.

I
have always loved books – both for what they contain and
what they are. As a young child I often played with books, and
I can still remember the joy with which I lay in bed and realized
I had read my first whole book – from cover to cover! A
few years later I experienced a similar joy when, after reading
some James Hilton and Somerset Maugham paperbacks I'd found in
the cellar, I discovered that I had been reading novels! This
sounded so very grown-up.

I
continued to read voraciously, wearing the completed books on
my bookshelves like battle scars, but I was never aware of the
process of making books – they might have simply arrived
in the book shops overnight, ready-formed, direct from the planet
Penguin.This changed when I was about 13.

One
evening my father came home from work and held something out to
me. It looked a little like a book. On closer inspection, it turned
out to be a school geography text book, bound in green cloth and
with erratic gold lettering on the spine. Perhaps it had been
in a traffic accident at the mobile library.

'Lionel
at the office did it at his book binding evening class. It's not
bad is it?'

I
said, 'Wouldn't it be kindest to take it to a qualified librarian?
He could give it a lethal injection and put it out of its misery?'
No, I didn't really say that, what I said was, 'Mmmm, yes. Mmmm.'

It
was important to sound neutral. My father could be unpredictable,
and any trace of enthusiasm in my voice might encourage him to
take up book binding himself. Without warning, all my school text
books might suddenly be transformed into green-bound grotesques
like the one in my father's hand. I was responsible for those
school books – I might still be in detention when I was
thirty.

Thus
it was that for the next several decades I suppressed all thought
of the bookbinder's craft. I sometimes hankered after a casebound
blank book, but this passed once I'd seen the price. Two occurrences,
however, conspired to change my view.

One
afternoon during the summer of 1992 I chanced to visit the Brighton
Polytechnic (as it then was) gallery looking at the Part-time
Certificate in Arts and Crafts student show. I found myself in
front of a glass case filled with the most amazing books, or perhaps
not-quite-books, for they were like no books I had ever seen before.

Mostly
they were simple pleat-backed bindings, but I was astounded. I
had already pulled a scrap of paper from my pocket and started
making notes on their construction when I had a sudden revelation:
instead of scribbling notes so I could simulate these books at
home, I could take the course and learn how to make books properly.

At
about the same time I visited Hove Museum and Art Gallery, which
was showing Paper Works, a touring exhibition originating from
Oriel Mostyn in Llandudno. I was very taken by many of the exhibits,
but the ones I returned to again and again, over several visits,
were the books of Paul Johnson – tiny, jewel-coloured, perforated
and sporting pennants on crazy flagpoles. These were not sad,
green geography text-books; these were magic!

Once
enrolled on the Certificate in Bookbinding course I really began
to enjoy the craft of book-making, but after pamphlet and flat-back
multi-section books I was taught how to make a couple of Japanese
books: a four-hole pouch book and a concertina book. These seemed
to contact a part of me in a deeply satisfying way, and I became
a little obsessed by them.
In particular I made more and more concertina books, and I gradually
became aware that not only was this simple book form both useful
and versatile, but that I'd already seen dozens of these books
in my everyday life, without realising it.

Once
I realised that the concertina and the four-hole pouch book were
but two of many styles of Japanese book, I became really excited.
Unexpectedly finding several photographs of antique Japanese books
and book cases I experienced the strange constriction in my chest
that told me I was looking at something which was uniquely special
for me.

It
wasn't long before I discovered 'book art', for which some of
the Japanese forms might have been designed especially –
the joy of this discovery was great but, like others before me,
I thought I had invented the form. As my course progressed I had
to reach a decision concerning my Project. The choice of subject
seemed simple: Modern applications of traditional Japanese bookbinding
styles. Not only would this give me the opportunity to investigate
current and new applications for these fascinating bookforms,
it would also provide me with an opportunity to produce samples
of each of the many styles of Japanese book, including those I'd
previously avoided or dismissed as being without special usefulness.

I
hope that this dissertation will encourage readers to think of
archaic Japanese binding methods as dynamic styles of great relevance
to the present day. If possible, readers should examine the samples
of various bindings supplied as they read this report. Note that
these sample bindings have been 'Westernised' in that the title-strips
have been applied to what, in a true Japanese book, would be thought
of as the back of each book.

[The
final paragraph above refers to the hard copy of the dissertation
which is at present held in the Special Collection of the St Peters
House Library, University of Brighton, Richmond Terrace, Brighton,
where it may be seen by arrangement. The sample bindings are not
stored with the dissertation but are in the author's private collection;
however, it is planned to include pictures of them here as this
site continues to develop.]